Algiz
The Sedge in the Fen
The rune the English poem gives as elk-sedge, a fen plant that draws blood from the hand closing on it.
The Old English poem names it eolh-secg, elk-sedge: it lives most often in the fen, grows in the water, wounds grimly, and burns with blood every man who takes hold of it. That is the entire medieval gloss. The familiar readings, the elk and protection, come from attempts to reconstruct the Proto-Germanic name behind eolhx, either *algiz, elk, or a word for defence; specialists still disagree, and neither is a gloss. The Norse poems cannot help, because the Younger Futhark inverted this shape, gave it the sound value ʀ, and called it ýr, borrowing the name of the discarded yew rune. Warding hands and antlers are twentieth-century.
Light
The plant in the stanza defends itself absolutely: it grows where it is hard to reach and injures anyone who closes a hand on it. Protection read out of the image, rather than out of any tradition.
Shadow
The sedge does not choose whom it cuts; the poem has it bloody every man who grasps it. A defence of that kind is indiscriminate, and costly first of all to whoever reaches for it.
